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“Saint” Martin Luther Appears at the Vatican.

by Christopher A. Ferrara
October 19, 2016

Sister Lucia of Fatima was not being melodramatic when she spoke of “diabolical disorientation” in the Church in light of the Third Secret. If that phrase does not describe the nearly four years of the current pontificate thus far, then words have lost their meaning.

By now the whole Catholic world knows that on October 13, 2016, the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Pope Francis ignored the Madonna and celebrated Martin Luther instead before an audience of Lutherans on an “ecumenical pilgrimage” at the Paul VI Audience Hall.

The Lutheran group, from Germany, was led by faux Lutheran clerics, including a Lutheran woman in clerical garb who seems to think she is a bishop. Francis seems to think so too, as he greeted her warmly along with the other faux Lutheran bishops, to whom he referred explicitly as bishops. During the event, a statue of the arch-heretic shared the stage with Francis — adding another unprecedented scandal to the annals of the tumultuous postconciliar epoch.

This audience with Lutherans was part of the run-up to Francis’ stupefying voyage to Sweden on October 30-31, where he will “commemorate” the “Reformation” that destroyed the unity of Christendom. Francis will participate in an ecumenical “prayer service” with some of the fake Lutheran clerics who purport to preside over “Lutheran Churches” in the Lutheran World Federation. These bodies, of course, are merely human organizations that owe their origin to a maniacal enemy of the Church and the papacy who violated his priestly vows, married a nun, was a foul-mouthed drunkard, and was excommunicated after spewing forth a stream of errors anathematized infallibly by the Council of Trent.

It is inconceivable that a Roman Pontiff could in any way honor the memory and the ruinous “legacy” of the single greatest heretic in the history of the Catholic Church. Even worse, however, is Francis’ seeming indifference to the spiritual condition of Lutherans, who are without a valid priesthood and thus without either the Sacrament of Confession or the Holy Eucharist.

In that regard the October 13th audience, about which I have written extensively elsewhere, is remarkable for this statement by Francis to his Lutheran audience concerning the correct approach to people who profess no religion:

What must we say to convince them? Listen! The last thing we should do is say: You should live as a Christian — chosen, forgiven and growing in virtue [in cammino, fig.]. It is not right [lecito] to convince someone of your faith. Proselytism is the great poison against the path of ecumenism [applause].

The denunciation of “proselytism,” which Francis clearly understands to mean any attempt to persuade others of the truths of Christianity, would mean in practice the abandonment of the Church’s missionary activity in favor of a vague “witness” in the form of good works. If the Apostles and the great saints and courageous missionaries who followed them for generation after generation had followed Francis’ view of the Church’s mission, the Church would never have converted the world and might well have died in Jerusalem.

For as Saint Paul teaches: “Faith then cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ (Rom. 10:17).” Accordingly, in his Oath Against Modernism — abandoned after Vatican II — Pope Saint Pius X required all Catholic clerics and theologians to affirm that faith is “the true assent of the intellect to the truth received extrinsically ex auditu [from hearing], whereby we believe that what has been said, attested and revealed by the personal God, our Creator and Lord, to be true on account of the authority of God, the highest Truth.”

It is, therefore, absurd to demand that Catholics refrain from any effort to convince others of the Faith. But that bit of nonsense aside, what are we to make of the notion that the Lutherans sitting before Francis in the audience hall, deprived of the sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion, are nonetheless “chosen, forgiven and growing in virtue”? How can they be chosen, forgiven and growing in supernatural virtue without the sacraments that Christ instituted for the salvation of souls? And if they can be, then of what use are the sacraments to anyone? They would be merely superfluous.

As the Council of Trent declared infallibly:

CANON IV – If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification; – though all (the sacraments) are not indeed necessary for every individual; let him be anathema.

But it would seem that for Francis the sacraments are superfluous and that Lutherans are correct in their heretical belief “once saved, always saved” — by faith alone. Or else Francis thinks Lutherans somehow possess the sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion without a valid priesthood to provide them.

In either case, we have a Pope who appears to think that membership in the Holy Catholic Church is of no real importance for the salvation of souls and that Lutherans are saved in “churches” that condone, not only divorce, contraception and abortion in “difficult” cases, but also the “ordination” of women and the “marriage” of homosexuals.

What can one say about a Pope who honors Luther rather than the Madonna on the very anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, and who tells an audience of Lutherans that they can be “chosen” and “forgiven” without the helps of the very Church of which Luther was a sworn enemy? We can say that we are witnessing the very crisis Our Lady predicted in the Third Secret of Fatima, that precious message-warning to the world which the great Miracle She obtained for us authenticates beyond any doubt. Now is the time that She foretold.